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A short notice of appeal has been filed in the Federal Courts pertaining to the lawsuit brought by Rob Perry and Rex Dukeman, both members of the Concerned Tax Payers of Coles County group, that was dismissed at the circuit level earlier this month.

For those wondering why we referred to this as a scandal, we need not look any further than the actions of the Coles County Board members, or should I say lack of action, who have done nothing to fix what they know is broken.

For example, the board knows the Supervisor of Assessments did not hire Bob Becker to do the assessments because they are the ones that contracted with him to do it and had even put that fact in writing months prior to getting caught in the lie about his hiring. Only after being caught violating the statute for that matter did they change their tune to claim he is an employee, which he is not. Clearly, they forgot they told the legislatures they contracted with Becker to do the assessments when they told the public the Supervisor hired him as an employee. Can’t have it both ways Mr. Metzger!

Another example is the same letter to the State Legislature where they confirm their assessments were NOT uniform and in violation of the Department of Revenue rules and sought help on changing the law.

The letter fell on deaf ears, nothing was done to fix the problem they know about, and they went ahead and broke the very same rules this year that they acknowledged were violated last year.

Recognizing when something is wrong and doing nothing to fix it points to a scandal in our opinion.

The District Court stated that the matter is to be handled in State Court however we could not find any state statute that provided any remedy to the actions taken and the Court failed to point to any such statute to support their opinion, which is very strange in our opinion.